Page 38 of Who Cries for the Lost

Her face hardened. “Oh, she knew. I told her. She called me a wicked liar, but she knew. She knew what he was like far better than I did. It’s why she hated him.”

“She hated him?”

Phoebe Cox chewed a mouthful of sausage and nodded. “I heard her tell her friend once that in a perfect world, Miles would just die and make everyone happy.”

“What friend was this?”

“The Reverend Sinclair Palmer. He’s the rector up in Marylebone.” She huffed a soft, scornful breath. “A reverend. But that didn’t stop him from lusting after another man’s wife any more than it stopped her from encouraging him.”

“Do you think they were lovers?”

“Truthfully? I don’t know. But I heard him begging her to run off with him once. They were in the garden and didn’t know I could hear.”

“What did she say?”

“She told him she couldn’t leave her children. That’s when she said Miles should die and make everyone happy.”

Sebastian watched as an overloaded cart made its laborious way up the crowded street. “When was the last time you saw Sedgewick?”

The fear was back in her eyes, and she glanced away again. “I haven’t seen him since that time I told you about, when I went up to him in the street and begged him to help me after his wife turned me off.”

“What did he say?”

She colored again, but this time Sebastian thought it was with rage as much as with shame. “He said I should have thought of the consequences before I spread my legs for every man who smiled at me. But it’s not true! I never lay with anyone but him.”

“How is your baby?” Sebastian asked softly.

Phoebe Cox brought up a shaky hand to press her fingertips to her trembling lips, her voice breaking on a sob. “She’s dead. Her name was Amelia, and she was the sweetest, most beautiful little thing imaginable. But my milk dried up because I don’t get enough to eat, and I couldn’t find anything to feed her that she could keep down. So she died.”

“I’m sorry.” Sebastian watched as silent tears welled up in her eyes to roll down her dirty cheeks, and handed her his handkerchief. “You say you were with the Sedgewicks for four years?”

She clutched his handkerchief in her fist and nodded.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to see him dead? Besides his wife and her friend the Reverend, I mean.”

She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “No. But I’m not surprised someone killed him. He could be so charming, so gay and fun. I’d never met anyone quite like him. But there was another side to him, too, although it took me a long time to see it. It’s as if he were two different people, one lighthearted and cheerful, and the other quick-tempered, mean, and ugly. Afterward—after I realized what he was really like—I thought he was like Count Bacova. You know the character in Maria Carlisle’s novel, Bacova’s Castle?”

“Sorry, no; I haven’t read it. Who exactly is he?”

“Count Bacova? He’s a Hungarian nobleman known throughout the land for his kindness and generosity. But behind it all, he hides a terrible secret.”

“What’s his secret?” said Sebastian, although he had a nasty suspicion he knew exactly where this was going.

“He’s a werewolf. Don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily. “I don’t mean to imply that Mr. Sedgewick was a werewolf. It’s only that he had these two sides to his character, and he could change from one to the other so quickly. I’ve often wondered if the tales of werewolves might have originated from that—the way some people seem to have two natures, one they normally show the world and another, darker side that they try to keep hidden.” She paused, her eyes pleading, as if desperate for understanding, as she looked up at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian. “I do.”

Chapter 22

After Phoebe Cox finished eating, Sebastian managed with some difficulty to convince her to let him give her ten pounds. She still didn’t trust him, still couldn’t believe he didn’t intend to exploit her in some way. But she was desperate, and in the end need overcame doubt. He then headed east, pushing his way through the gathering evening crowds of prostitutes and young bucks on the strut, to Covent Garden Theatre.

Stepping inside the theater’s soaring marble-clad foyer, he breathed in the familiar scents of orange peel, greasepaint, and sawdust and found himself pausing for a moment. The sounds and smells of a working theater always sent him hurtling back in time, to the days when he’d been newly down from Oxford, young and idealistic and so very much in love.

The liaison between his heir and a beautiful young Irish actress had naturally alarmed Sebastian’s father—or rather, the man he’d thought was his father. But in his youth and naive confidence, Sebastian hadn’t cared. He’d asked Kat to become his wife, and she’d said yes. In a rage, Hendon promised to cut him off without a penny and make “damned sure” he didn’t inherit anything that wasn’t entailed. But Sebastian had simply laughed, and Kat had sworn she didn’t care... until the day she told him she did care, that she’d changed her mind and decided she didn’t want to marry him after all. That’s when he’d bought himself a pair of colors and gone off to war.

He hadn’t exactly been looking to get himself killed. But he’d thrown himself into battle with a recklessness that could easily have had that result. He didn’t learn the truth of what had actually passed between Kat and Hendon for seven long years. And by then it had been too late.

He had no regrets. In the years since then he’d found a joy and love with Hero that he hadn’t believed possible, while his friendship with Kat had gradually shifted into the kind of easy affection that exists between a brother and sister—which is what they’d once mistakenly believed themselves to be. But the mingling scents of greasepaint, sawdust, and orange peel still had the power to fill him with a piercing kind of sadness for the lost innocence of those halcyon days.

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